Sunday, October 18, 2020

Sunday's Obituary - Jeremiah Creeden (1841 - 25 Nov 1916)

Jeremiah Creeden came from Ireland and settled in Indianapolis, Indiana with his wife Mary Toomey. I have a DNA match to a descendant of Jeremiah, but don't know for sure if they connect to my Creeden family. I don't recognize any of the other surnames in the trees I've seen for Jeremiah, so he seems like a possible connection for this match.

This funeral notice for Jeremiah was published in 1916 in The Indianapolis News. From the notice, Jeremiah died on November 25, 1916 and was buried at the Holy Cross cemetery.

I did a little digging in other newspaper articles and found that Jeremiah and Mary had a large family including the following children: Daniel G., John B., Catherine, Jeremiah M., Nora Gertrude Mosher, Rev. Leo Francis, Hannah R., Mary, Margaret A. Finn and William Henry Creeden. Most of them also lived in Indianapolis and were buried at Holy Cross.

Monday, January 13, 2020

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks 2020 - Week 2 - Favorite Photo

The 52 Ancestors prompt for this week is Favorite Photo.

This was one of the first photos I saw in my dad's collection and it's always been one of my favorites. It's one of the few photos I have of my great-grandfather Charles Creeden when he was younger. I love the clothes and hats in the picture. The back of the photo is labeled with "Charles and brothers". I know that Charles is the one in the middle, but I'm not sure which of his brothers are in the picture.

Charles Creeden (middle) and brothers

Charles was born in 1886 and was married in 1907. The family picture in the header of my blog shows Charles and his young family around 1911. I think he looks a little older in the family picture, so maybe the picture of the brothers was taken before then. The clothes in the picture are consistent with being in that time period and may provide some clues.

My guess is that Charles' younger brother Joshua is on the left and his brother Edward is on the right. Joshua was born in 1894 and Edward in 1884. Just for fun, I uploaded the photo to Microsoft's how-old.net site. This site is not known for being accurate and I do think it's quite a bit off in this case! It did suggest that Charles was the older brother in the picture and I agree with that.

Age guesses from how-old.net
The other possibilities for brothers would be Daniel, born in 1879 and Dennis, born in 1878. Since they were both a few years older than Charles, I don't think they are in the picture. I don't have any other photos of Edward and the ones of Joshua were taken when he was quite a bit older. The brother on the right doesn't look like Joshua, so I'm going with the theory that he is Edward for now. And of course, one other possibility is that the picture was labeled wrong and those aren't Charles' brothers after all!

#52Ancestors is a series of weekly family history prompts developed by Amy Johnson Crow.

Tuesday, January 7, 2020

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks 2020 - Week 1 - Fresh Start

I'm once again going to do some blog posts based on Amy Johnson's 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks prompts. Thanks to Amy for developing the prompts!

The first 52 Ancestors prompt for 2020 is Fresh Start. The themes are meant to be open to interpretation :-) Perhaps you have an ancestor who had to make a fresh start after a loss or setback. Maybe you had to make a fresh start on researching a particular ancestor.

I'm going to use this prompt to make a fresh start on my genealogy goals for 2020. Every once in awhile, I refer back to a post about my 2x great-grandparents and my research progress for each line. A lot of those goals still apply and I plan on doing a more detailed update of my progress for each line as I review my research.

Here are my initial 2020 goals. I hope to apply these to each of my lines shown below.
  • Review my digital files and identify information I haven't posted yet.
  • Update my surname posts for each line with any new information.
  • Identify areas to concentrate my research on for 2020.
  • Continue with the 52 Ancestor prompts. 
  • Use Family Tree Magazine's 2020 Genealogy Research Plan as a guide to setting additional goals. There are some great ideas here! 

The graphics below show my great-grandparents and 2x great-grandparents.

Great-grandparents for my Councill and Sparks families - Maryland
Great-grandparents for my Willis and Chilcutt families - Maryland, Delaware
Great-grandparents for my Pulskamp and Gast families - Ohio, Germany
Great-grandparents for my Creeden and Niehaus families - Ohio, Ireland, Germany

If anyone is interested in any of these lines, please leave me a comment on this post. I'd love to hear from you and would be glad to share information.

#52Ancestors is a series of weekly family history prompts developed by Amy Johnson Crow.